Author: Jessa Maxwell
Publication: Atria Books (August 13, 2024)
Description: The author of the “clever, atmospheric, and creepy” (Andrea Bartz, New York Times bestselling author) The Golden Spoon returns with a sly and addictive new mystery about an advice columnist searching for answers about her predecessor’s murder.
Her most important letter might be her last…
Years ago Alex Marks escaped to New York City for a fresh start. Now, aside from trips to her regular diner for coffee, she keeps to herself, gets her perfectly normal copywriting job done, and doesn’t date. Her carefully cultivated world is upended when her childhood hero, Francis Keen, is brutally murdered. Francis was the woman behind the famous advice column, Dear Constance, and her words helped Alex through some of her darkest times.
When Alex sees an advertisement searching for her replacement, she impulsively applies, never expecting to actually get the job. Against all odds, Alex is given the position and quickly proves herself skilled at solving other people’s problems. But soon, she begins to receive strange, potentially threatening letters at the office. Francis’s murderer was never identified, turning everyone around her into a threat. Including her boss, editor-in-chief Howard Dimitri, who has a habit of staying late at the office and drinking too much.
As Alex is drawn into the details surrounding her predecessor’s murder, her own dark secrets begin to rise to the surface and Alex suddenly finds herself trapped in a dangerous and potentially deadly game of cat and mouse that takes her all the way from the power centers of Manhattan to Francis Keen’s summer house, where her body was found and where the killer may just be waiting for her.
My Thoughts: Alex Marks gets the chance of a lifetime when she is chosen to take the place of Francis Keen who wrote the very popular advice column Dear Constance after Francis's death.
Alex has been hiding in New York City for years and working as a copywriter for a pharmaceutical company. She has made a couple of friends at the Bluebird Diner which is across the street from her apartment, but otherwise leads a life of loneliness and isolation filled with rituals to keep herself safe.
Dear Constance had been a lifeline for her before she managed to escape from a bad situation, and she still reads it today for insights into her life. Still, she is very much surprised when she is the one chosen to write the column. She is pleased but also frightened because her new job with include some public exposure which might make her vulnerable to her past. And Francis's murderer has never been caught.
This was an engaging and twisty thriller interspersed with letters Alex wrote to Dear Catherine which gradually expose why she left her past behind to start anew in New York City. I was drawn into the story and really needed to know what happened next.
I received this one in exchange for an honest review from NetGalley. You can buy your copy here.
I received this one in exchange for an honest review from NetGalley. You can buy your copy here.
Thanks for the review.
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